Alien 13

Brilliant stuff, never gets old 👌

Alan

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

This was with a Canon 250D and the 100-400 L series zoom, hand held but braced against the side of the house and simply autofocused. Cropped heavily as it is here, it nicely fills the frame of the PC at full size (1:1).

Olly

You should do more Olly, a lens is ideal for Luna together with some foreground interest.

Alan

This was a quick and dirty hand held effort with my Canon 70-200 and TC, cropped as you would expect but starting to show some details.

Alan

A full frame camera complicates things a little as there are fewer lenses/scopes that can cover the sensor without severe vignetting, I have however had reasonable results with a Canon 70-200 f/4 L  lens and a X2 Kenko teleconverter which makes a handy hand held option on my 80D, it even autofocuses too.

For full disc I find my Mak gives superb results but still vignettes even with an APS-C sensor.

Alan

What a strange topic, a time warp and no pictures to support it 😀

Alan

I like a bit of "class" so I would print any I needed in carbon fibre or wood PLA 😀

Alan

A common cause of Canon cameras not turning on relates to an earlier post about the Battery and SD covers, there is a microswitch operated by a tiny pin on the door of the battery cover that can easily be broken off.

Alan

If it were me I would print a strip on a normal 2d printer and wrap it around, could use normal photo paper or that plasticky stuff..

Alan

P.S. Think the special waterproof paper was by Raymark.

I see so many scary faces in the image I cant look anymore 😱

Alan

7 hours ago, SzabiB said:

New cordless air duster to clean optical elements + drone gears.

Picked it up from Amazon with some voucher, so worked out around £33. 

I wasn't expecting a hurricane machine, but have to admit, it is pretty impressive.

 

I have something similar and its like comparing an air can or rocket blower to a real hurricane, can knock cans down 12 feet away... Great for my PC and keyboard etc.

Alan

I have a few mobile phone power banks, well a lot actually to power LED stick thingies and keep my phone working and a camping gas stove so all set 😀

Alan

If Newton had one of these in his day we would have no reflectors now, had an ST80 long ago and the views were really stunning. 

Alan

Nice, we never get enough videos and I personally think they add something special..

Alan

1 minute ago, Cakedestroyer said:

Just a static tripod and efs55-250mm lens. This will be my second attempt at dark sky after the failed attempt a few weekends ago. After I do this a bit more I think I might grab a star adventurer 2i pro pack or something.

Bad new is it seems like the clouds are moving in for tonight . Hopefully the cloudy streak ends soon!

Are you using the 400 rule to determine exposure time for example 400/fl =time in seconds before trailing becomes obvious so if you had the lens at 200mm then 400/200 =2seconds.

Alan

5 minutes ago, Cakedestroyer said:

Ok, I might go for 1600 then. I think it was probably good that I asked before I used 6400 for another night. Does this mean I will need to increase the amount of shots I take? I am currently planning on about 500 subs at 1" which would be a total exposure time of 8 minutes and 20 seconds.

 

Thanks!

What lens or scope are you using and is it on a static tripod?

Alan

1 minute ago, Cakedestroyer said:

Thanks!
Is it ok to go a bit higher than 800 or is that pretty much a hard limit?

There are no hard limits but you might not gain anything by going higher, 1600 might be OK though depending on conditions.

Alan

The reported "best" ISO for the Canon 60D is 800, have a look here.

Alan

3 minutes ago, Second Time Around said:

Apologies if you're already aware of rtings.com but the above is what I recently posted elsewhere.

Thanks, I did take your advice (in another thread) and opted for a 27inch gaming monitor with 1440p 144Hz with a wide gamut, I chose the BenQ EX 2780Q in the end and am delighted by its out of the box colour accuracy and performance but what swung it was the IR remote for all adjustments..

Alan

I have found that "follow focus" gears and accessories for cine or DSLR lenses a useful source of parts..

Alan

43 minutes ago, symmetal said:

That's the hazard of buying the cheap pens off ebay, I'm afraid. I bought them from two different sellers and one was class 2 and one was class 3. You can go for a refund but I didn't bother as it wasn't worth the hassle for the price.

I doubt a 5mW will cause any problems but not sure if I would want to risk it on an expensive camera. 🤔

Alan

I too think a genuine 5mW laser would not damage a sensor or your eyes as they are still deemed (eye safe) but you have no actual guarantee that these lasers are indeed 5mW or what the output spectrum is, could be anything.

Alan

Incredible what you can do with a phone these days, very nice.

Alan

I went through this a few weeks ago so had the pain.

Not sure if your monitor is a wide gamut model like mine but you will have fun trying to calibrate it..Thankfully mine has full control of Brightness and contrast when in sRGB mode which helps.

Alan

8 hours ago, saac said:

I think intelligence would be a high stake gamble for nature to take in response to a species level threat.  On Earth we have seen in evolution where an organism faces such a threat, over predation for example, survival tends to emerge through advantageous adaptations. The dominant colour of the peppered moth arising as a favourable adaptation.  Intelligence could I guess be a favourable adaptation but I think nature would first try less complex and timely changes.  

 

Jim 

Agreed but this has happened with a few diverse species, the Octopus, Corvids have the intelligence of a 6 year old human and who knows regarding the insect hive mind or even the huge plant/fungus networks that operate on a differing timescale to us.

Alan

30 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

1) What would happen to life on a planet in which energy was abundant and transferable? Stellar energy, perhaps, like an extremely efficient form of photosynthesis.  If this removed the need for predation it would, we might argue, remove the need to develop intelligence. But...

2) What would happen if this life form were threatened by, say, a inorganic threat like an unstable environment. The drive to find ways around this instability might be a driver for intelligence?

Olly

Not sure how a life form would exist without other nutrients and water so the little beggars would still be fighting over these 😃 

Having said that it could be a system without predation between species and the fight for the tasty rocks etc could push intelligence. 

Alan

Predation and competition for recourse are what fuels evolution, even plants do it..

Off topic but who else thinks the dominant most intelligent species on earth are plants, they have every other species working for them in one way or another 😃

Alan